Poll Dancer or Pole Dancer?

Let's say that C-span has a live camera and microphone focussed on the Vice President of the United States of America on the floor of the Senate as Cheney approaches Senator Leahy. Face to face, Cheney screeches at Leahy, "Go F**K yourself!"

Who is the bad guy here? By that I mean, who should be punished for committing a crime against our nation and it's people?

Senator Leahy has obviously done or said something to make poor Mr. Cheney angry, and I believe it was to demonstrate that Mr. Cheney was a serial liar on the floor of the Senate.

No news there.

Mr. Cheney was angry and blurted out an expletive that adults use toward each other for various reasons. It has an obvious sexual etomology, curious in it's own right, but now is simply the nuclear weapon in personal insults. The news is that Mr. Cheney felt compelled to use the insult and this would be amply demonstrated by C-span's televised coverage. All the world could witness this on a vivid and personal basis, and thereby draw appropriate conclusions as to the worthiness of the participants in this little drama.

Once again we note the question: Who is the bad guy here?

Well according to the Federal Communications Commission it would be C-span who would be vigorously fined for airing this blurted expletive on the public airwaves.

Cheney tells a US Senator to "Go F**K himself" and C-Span gets punished?

The regulations that would fine C-Span were put in place by a bunch of grandstanding conservatives... Pretend to fight obscenity, not by sanctioning Dick Cheney, but by fining the people who would show the world what a jerk the man is.

Well now a Court has actually ruled that the regulations are stupid.

"Adopting an argument made by lawyers for NBC, the judges then cited examples in
which Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney had used the same language that would be penalized under the policy. Mr. Bush was caught on videotape last July using a common vulgarity that the commission finds objectionable in a conversation with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. Three years ago, Mr. Cheney was widely reported to have muttered an angry obscene version of “get lost” to Senator
Patrick Leahy on the floor of the United States Senate."

Then the Judges mentioned something I though we had done away with in Bush America...The Constitution:

“We are skeptical that the commission can provide a reasoned explanation for its
‘fleeting expletive’ regime that would pass constitutional muster...”

So CBS shouldn't be punished for a live broadcast in which Bono blurts and expletive about children dying in Darfur.

Will this give conservatives a talking point for the next election or will they just turn to even stupider things like calling for the firing of Joe Scarborough for discussing Fred Thompson's wife being a Pole Dancer?

I predict...

Both.

Peace,

Steve

Court rebuffs Indecency regulations


Quote of the Day:

"...what politics has become requires a level of tolerance for triviality and
artifice and nonsense that I find I have in short supply."

...Al Gore